Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) it's toxic did you know that?

MSG is toxic to the human body

MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) is actually harmful. The active ingredient in MSG is glutamate. Glutamate is classified as an excitotoxin (excito-toxin). The following website has a video titled “the taste that kills.” The doctor in the video, Dr. Russell Blaylock (an actual Surgeon) as well as an author, lecturer and educator, reveals some very interesting facts about MSG. The video is an hour and a half long; however, the first 15 minutes contain some facts that are almost unbelievable.MSGfree.org | being MSG free is an active choice

Go to Google.com and in the search bar type “define excitotoxin”. You will be shown the following web definition:
Excitotoxicity is the pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged and killed by glutamate and similar substances. This occurs...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excitotoxin

“Pathological process” Go to Merriam Webster Dictionary online and search for "pathological" and you will find:
Pathological: being such to a degree that is extreme, excessive, or markedly abnormal <a pathological liar> <pathological fear> Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online

For those that prefer the mainstream of Wikipedia go there and search for “excitotoxin” and you will be redirected to “excitotoxicity”. There you will find the following:
Excitotoxicity is the pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged and killed by excessive stimulation by neurotransmitters such as glutamate and similar substances. This occurs when receptors for the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate (glutamate receptors) such as the NMDA receptor and AMPA receptor are overactivated.

History:
The negative effects of glutamate were first observed in 1954 by T. Hayashi, a Japanese scientist who noted that direct application of glutamate to the CNS caused seizure activity, though this report went unnoticed for several years. The toxicity of glutamate was then observed by D. R. Lucas and J. P. Newhouse in 1957, when the subcutaneous injection of monosodium glutamate to newborn mice destroyed the neurons in the inner layers of the retinaExcitotoxicity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting is the fact that if you go to Wikipedia and search flat-out for monosodium glutamate, you will be told the following:
Monosodium glutamate, also known as sodium glutamate or MSG, is the sodium salt of glutamic acid, one of the most abundant naturally occurring non-essential amino acids. It has been classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as generally recognized as safe

Notice how they played on the words "generally recognized', and not "recognized as safe"

So, I am wondering, if MSG is supposed to be safe, then WHY did it destroy the neurons in the inner layers of the retina of mice? Some might say that humans may react differently to MSG than mice. If that is the case, then WHY do scientists use mice in labs to run tests that are considered beneficial for humans? Watch that video of Dr. Bllylock, and you will know WHY it is 'called' safe, when it really isn't.

The choice is yours, I just wanted to bring this to the attention of those out there that might not be aware of what this stuff can do to the human body

If you eat it, it's not going directly into your retina. Pretty much every protein in your body contains glutamate and it's a normal dietary nutrient. There's a lot of different metabolic processes involved with glutamate: Glutamate Metabolism There's many videos by "actual surgeons" proclaiming all manner of things, it's important to be critical and go back to the actual research, which doesn't support any claims of toxicity from normal dietary intake. There are many substances which are essential to the body or are even produced by the body, that will do all kinds of nasty things if you give too large of dose or inject them somewhere you shouldn't, but that's no reason to fear them. For example, insulin, as diabetics know, is critically important for humans, but a bit too much can easily result in death. Humans have evolved on this planet and glutamate is found in a huge variety of proteins from plants, animals, fungi, and pretty much anything else we eat. When ingested normally, the body is equipped to deal with it.

Glutamate is a key intermediate in the synthesis of several amino acids, and is normally generated in the body from a-keto-glutarate from the TCA cycle. It is safe.

Moreover, "generally recognized as safe" is a technical term used by the FDA to mean, "this compound is so safe that we feel no need to place any regulations on how much you can add to food products." So, yes, it's safe.

Protip: the FDA has doctors too, and a lot more of them, and grounds its rulings in the scientific literature.

If you eat it, it's not going directly into your retina. Pretty much every protein in your body contains glutamate and it's a normal dietary nutrient. There's a lot of different metabolic processes involved with glutamate: Glutamate Metabolism There's many videos by "actual surgeons" proclaiming all manner of things, it's important to be critical and go back to the actual research, which doesn't support any claims of toxicity from normal dietary intake. There are many substances which are essential to the body or are even produced by the body, that will do all kinds of nasty things if you give too large of dose or inject them somewhere you shouldn't, but that's no reason to fear them. For example, insulin, as diabetics know, is critically important for humans, but a bit too much can easily result in death. Humans have evolved on this planet and glutamate is found in a huge variety of proteins from plants, animals, fungi, and pretty much anything else we eat. When ingested normally, the body is equipped to deal with it.

Sure, this fancy "science" sounds good, but he's a cat. They lie. Trust the random internet peoples that are totally bonafide surgeons. Nobody lies on the internet... except cats.

As for the original argument:

The cat dealt with the main argument, so I'll take the aside of animal testing. Honestly, the arguments for why we use animals in labs in highly hypocritical. The idea is that they are near-human enough that they give accurate predictions (sometimes), but that they are dissimilar enough that there are no ethical issues with doing "inhumane" things to them, like removing an arm to test prosthetics on primates, or just destroying parts of their brains that we know are in humans just to see how they act differently.

They are also not always right. Animals have different proteins and stuff in them than humans, so sometimes when things are tested on animals they show no side-effects (at least nothing serious), then when it gets to human trials people go completely blind because it turns out there's an adverse reaction to something in the treatment with something in your body that the other animal just doesn't have at all (completely made-up example because I'm too lazy to find a real one, but this stuff does happen). My psych professor actually wrote a paper on why animal testing should be stopped (and while I agree for wholly different reasons, his piece is mostly a "think of the children animals" thing with some experiments-gone-wrong thrown in) and from a purely logical standpoint, he makes sense. He sees it as it being ethically wrong to test on animals if we don't test on humans without consent, then it follows that we shouldn't test on animals that can't give consent. I preferred to look at as: if we test on animals without consent, why not test on people, like replace death row with clinical trials row? But I'm a terrible person that way...

What it comes down to is that the gut reaction is "you can't test on people!" by the general population, but a lot of people are like "animals? They have no souls, you can maim them as long as you give a 'good' reason". The scientists take what they can get.

The FDA is one of the strictest regulatory agencies in the world - anyone who has ever worked in pharma can easily verify this. If the FDA says it's safe, that's as reliable an endorsement as you're likely to find anywhere else.

There are plenty of things you eat which would do damage if you were to inject them into your retina, by the way.

We have been hearing about MSG since the early 1980's. Like anything, too much will kill you.

Let's see what we can put on this list of "too much will kill you but avoid it entirely and die". Shall we do one or two per person to start?

1) Water: Not drowning, but water poisoning is known. Try living without water for a week or two and you'll die.
2) Salt (sodium): Absolutely critical to many of the processes in our body. A diet without any salt at all is just as dangerous as one overloaded with it.

edit: This is always fun to look at...

By the way, have you looked into the dangers of DHMO (Di-hydrogen Monoxide)? It is a major component of acid rain, many companies are allowed to dump it in nearly pure form straight into sources of drinking water, and it is used heavily as a solvent by many chemical manufacturers. Maybe it should be banned?

Last edited by AnalogRTO; 09-Feb-2012 at 19:03.
Reason: Add some light humor